27612: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Elections (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHAEL NORTON

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 9 (AP) -- Rene Preval, a former president seen as a
champion of Haiti's poor, appeared headed Thursday to a first-round
election victory, even before official results were announced.
   Preval, a former protege and one-time ally of ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was characteristically low key as reports of
election returns landed at his party headquarters in Port-au-Prince. A
campaign official said Preval had won almost 68 percent of the 359,000
votes counted so far.
   Leslie Manigat, believed to be Preval's strongest rival in the field of
nearly three dozen candidates, said early returns showed Preval has surged
ahead.
   "There is a tiny chance that we will have a second round, but I fear
Preval has made a clean sweep of the votes," Manigat said.
   Standing on the porch of his family home in Marmelade, a rural northern
town, Preval said he was marking time and catching up on sleep until
official results are made public. Election officials said that might not be
until late Friday or Saturday.
   "My work is over," Preval told The Associated Press. "I'm waiting. It's
boring."
   His campaigning is ended unless he fails to win a majority and must go
to a second-round election in March against the other top vote-getter. But
Preval faces monumental tasks if he wins the presidency of this
impoverished nation.
   Most Haitians can't read or write, and subsist on about a dollar a day.
A wave of kidnappings by armed gangs has swept the capital. Amid the
insecurity, assembly plants are closing, causing the losses of thousands of
jobs. Donor nations are hesitant to contribute because of a legacy of
government corruption.
   Preval's own tenure as president from 1996-2001 was less than stellar.
His efforts at agrarian reform failed because poor people who received land
couldn't live on the small amount they were given. He clashed with
parliament over the legitimacy of legislators who won contested elections.
Human rights advocates accused him of interfering in the judicial system
and of politicizing the police force.
   But poor Haitians remember that Preval tried to help them. Even the
smaller efforts are remembered by those whose plight was ignored by a
series of governments and dictatorships.
   "He built the big marketplace downtown. He fixed it so that the vendors
could get out of the mud," said Yves Valea, a 70-year-old street sweeper.
   In Cite Soleil, a slum ruled by gangs that have grown stronger since a
rebellion ousted Aristide two years ago, a dozen jobless youths stood idle
outside decrepit storefronts plastered with Preval campaign posters. Some
of the young men shouted: "Long live Preval!"
   Israel Privil, a 40-year-old shoe repairman standing nearby, proudly
pointed to his ink-stained thumb, proof he voted Tuesday.
   "I voted for Preval because I was without hope," he said. "When Preval
was in power, there were agricultural jobs and more programs for the
peasants. We hope that if he becomes president he'll continue that work."
   Preval pictures himself as a reluctant candidate.
   When he stepped down as president after five years -- the only Haitian
president to complete his term in office -- Preval went to live in his
grandmother's house in Marmelade, where he devoted himself to local
development projects. He said he decided to run for the presidency after
1,000 people from across the country came to see him in July and urged him
to run.
   Preval stood for years in the shadow of Aristide, his dominating
predecessor. Aristide, who referred to Preval as his "twin," was ousted
amid accusations he ordered gangsters to attack opponents and pocketed
millions of dollars.
   Preval made a point of saying in a recent interview that he has split
with Aristide, who is in exile in South Africa.
   "If I'm his 'twin,' we do not have the same mother," Preval told the AP.
Preval pointed out that nothing can legally prevent Aristide from returning
to Haiti, but added that he may have to face a trial.
   Preval would have a fresh start in relations with Washington, said
Robert Fatton, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.
   "When (Preval) was president, the U.S. did not necessarily think he was
a bad man, but they considered he had his hands tied up by Aristide,"
Fatton said in a telephone interview. "The U.S. now believes Preval is his
own man."
   ------
   Associated Press writers Stevenson Jacobs in Port-au-Prince and Joseph
B. Frazier in Marmelade contributed to this report.